George for better ties with China
Beijing, April 24
Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes, who once irked China by
branding it India’s main threat, has called for greater cooperation to
foster friendship during a week-long visit. Mr Fernandes, the seniormost
Indian defence official to visit China in more than a decade, is here
till April 27 in the hope of pushing forward a slow-moving rapprochement
with giant neighbour China.

Ties with India not to hit Pak, says Karzai
Islamabad, April 24
Seeking to dispel Pakistan’s fears over India operating its consulates
in two Afghan cities close to the Pakistan border, Afghanistan’s
President Hamid Karzai has said Afghan-India relations will have no
bearing whatsoever in a negative manner towards Islamabad.

Pak support to J&K outfits continues
Washington, April 24A warning by the CIA that Pakistan continues to support
terrorist groups in Jammu and Kashmir and that the cycles of tension
between India and Pakistan are growing shorter forms the backdrop of the
forthcoming visit of US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to
India and Pakistan.

Armitage’s visit to ease Indo-Pak tensionWashington, April 24Initiating steps to ease Indo-Pak tension and stop cross-border infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir would top the agenda of US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage during his forthcoming visit to the sub-continent, State department spokesman Richard Boucher has said.

Indian Army
Chief General Nirmal Chander Vij, left, receives an honorary sword
of generalship from King Gyanendra of Nepal at the Royal Palace in
Katmandu, Nepal, on Wednesday. Vij is on a four-day goodwill visit
to the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. — AP/PTI

A Bureau of Customs and Border Protection agent holds a knife from Iraq at the bureau in Atlanta
on Wednesday. Several members of the media and a US serviceman have been caught attempting to ship Iraqi paintings, weapons and other war souvenirs to America,
US authorities said on Wednesday.
— AP/PTI

Polar bear cub nuzzles its mother Simona in Moscow's zoo on
Thursday. Two polar bear cubs were born in December, and started playing in the open in spring when it became warmer.
— Reuters

Kashmir ‘lobbying’ award for UK MPLondon, April 24
Britain’s Labour MP George Galloway was the recipient of two of the highest civilian awards in Pakistan, "partly in recognition of his work to promote the Kashmiri cause," according to the Daily Telegraph.

5 indicted for trying
to kill Musharraf
Karachi, April 24An Anti-Terrorism Court today indicted four Islamic
militants and a former Ranger in connection with last year’s attempted
assassination of President Pervez Musharraf in southern Pakistan,
prosecutors said.

Pak offers way to Gurdwara KartarpurLahore, April 24The Pakistani Government is ready to provide unrestricted passage to Indian Sikh devotees who want to visit Gurdwara Kartarpur in that country without a passport or a visa.

4 officials of Saddam’s regime arrested
Washington, April 24Coalition forces in Baghdad have arrested four officials from the defunct regime of Saddam Hussein, including the Commander of the Air Defence Force, the US military said.
Commander of the force Muzahim Sa’b Hassan al-Tikriti listed
as No 10 on the US list of the 55 most wanted Iraqis, was taken
in custody by the coalition forces, US Central Command in Doha,
Qatar, said yesterday.

Muhammad Mahdi al-Salih

Muzahim Sa’b Hassan

Winnie found
guilty of fraud
Durban, April 24Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, was today found guilty of fraud and theft amounting to nearly a million rands ($ 131,000) and faces a maximum of 15 years in jail.

Beijing, April 24
Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes, who once irked China by branding it India’s main threat, has called for greater cooperation to foster friendship during a week-long visit.

Mr Fernandes, the seniormost Indian defence official to visit China in more than a decade, is here till April 27 in the hope of pushing forward a slow-moving rapprochement with giant neighbour China.

“I hope that we can evolve a framework whereby there will be much greater contact, confidence-building and cooperation between our two armed forces in a mutually acceptable manner and thus raise our friendliness to a higher level,’’ Mr Fernandes told National Defence University in Beijing earlier this week.

“China’s national interest is better served by fostering this spirit of amity and friendship among us,’’ Mr Fernandes said. A copy of his speech was circulated today.

“It was not an impulsive decision nor was it intended to be provocative,’’ he said here, talking of the nuclear tests.

“It was a reluctant but inevitable decision intended to ensure that national sovereignty was neither impaired nor shrunk,’’ he said.

“‘No first use’ is the operative feature and we implicitly believe that nuclear weapons are meant for deterrence, though we will not be intimidated or threatened by any form of adventurism,’’ he stated.

The visit could further understanding and trust and reduce misgivings, said Sun Shihai, an expert on India at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.

“India has not totally eliminated its mentality that the enemy’s friend is an enemy,’’ he said today, referring to China’s good relations with Pakistan.

General Boxiong told Mr Fernandes that the 2.5 million-strong People’s Liberation Army was “willing to make unremitting efforts to develop friendly relations’’ with the Indian armed forces, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Mr Fernandes is expected to lay the groundwork for Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s trip to China later in the year.
Reuters

Islamabad, April 24
Seeking to dispel Pakistan’s fears over India operating its consulates in two Afghan cities close to the Pakistan border, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has said Afghan-India relations will have no bearing whatsoever in a negative manner towards Islamabad.

Mr Karzai told the Pakistani leadership during his two-day visit to Islamabad which ended yesterday that the Indian consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar existed since the independence of India.

“I must be very specific here to say that Afghanistan is aware of the sensitivity of these things between India and Pakistan, and Afghanistan doesn’t want to be involved in the politics of the two countries,” he was quoted by the local media as saying.

“Afghanistan will not allow its territory to be used by one friend of ours against another friend and a brother of ours, that has to be understood very very clearly. Afghan-India relations should have no bearing whatsoever in a negative manner towards Pakistan,” Mr Karzai said.

He also urged the Pakistan Government to become more active in pursuing members of Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime and handed over a list of wanted leaders to President Pervez Musharraf.

Mr Karzai said during their meeting on Tuesday, President Musharraf also agreed to form a joint border commission to prevent further Taliban incursions into Afghanistan.

“We have given the names of some top Taliban leaders for the Pakistan authorities to take action on. A longer and more specific list of names of the criminals will be given soon,” Mr Karzai was quoted as saying by the local daily “The Nation” today.

He said the list included Akhtar Mohammad Usmani, a deputy of the Taliban chief, Mullah Omar, Mullah Dadullah, the ousted militia’s intelligence chief, Mullah Biradar, the Taliban’s internal security chief, and Hafiz Mujeeb, a lower-ranking commander.

“All four men who based in Pakistan are presently known to be carrying guerrilla attacks on US and Afghan government forces in southern Afghanistan,” the newspaper said.

He said he believed Taliban chief Mullah Omar was also hiding in Pakistan but he do not know the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.
PTI

Washington, April 24
A warning by the CIA that Pakistan continues to support terrorist groups in Jammu and Kashmir and that the cycles of tension between India and Pakistan are growing shorter forms the backdrop of the forthcoming visit of US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to India and Pakistan. "Pakistan continues to support groups that resist India's presence in Kashmir in an effort to bring India to the negotiating table," CIA Director George Tenet said in a recent speech before the Senate Intelligence Committee now on the CIA web.

He said even though India's recent military redeployment had reduced the danger of imminent war, the underlying cause of tension was unchanged. "The cycles of tension between India and Pakistan are growing sorter."

"Indian frustration with continued terrorist attacks, most of which it attributes to Pakistan, causes New Delhi to reject any suggestion that it resume a dialogue with Islamabad," Tenet said. Without progress on resolving Indo-Pakistan differences, said Tenet, "any dramatic provocation--like 2001's terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament by Kashmir militants--runs a high risk of sparking another major military deployment." Tenet also said India and Pakistan continued to develop and produce nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Tenet included Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Iraq, Yemen and several nations in Sub-Saharan Africa among "the world's poorest and often most politically unstable countries with the youngest populations in the world through 2020."
PTI

Washington, April 24
Initiating steps to ease Indo-Pak tension and stop cross-border infiltration into Jammu and Kashmir would top the agenda of US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage during his forthcoming visit to the sub-continent, State department spokesman Richard Boucher has said.

Though Armitage's exact itinerary was still being worked out, he is planning to travel from May 5 to 11 to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan and preparations were underway, Boucher told reporters yesterday.

Elaborating the major aims of Armitage's visit, he said, "India and Pakistan, each of which represents for us an important relationship, there are plenty of bilateral issues and then there is also the relationship between India and Pakistan, looking for more steps that can be taken to ease the tensions, stop the infiltration and look towards a dialogue between the two."

"So without getting more specific, at this point we will see where we a re when he actually goes. But there is always ways to further that process that I am sure he will want to discuss," he said.
PTI

London, April 24
Britain’s Labour MP George Galloway was the recipient of two of the highest civilian awards in Pakistan, "partly in recognition of his work to promote the Kashmiri cause," according to the Daily Telegraph.

These claims were made in a report revealing Galloway’s alleged links with Islamabad and the Bhutto government.

He was one of the strongest campaigners for plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir and for India to implement the 1948 UN Resolution.

The newspaper had, two days ago, revealed that the MP had also received funds from the Saddam’s regime.
UNI

Karachi, April 24
An Anti-Terrorism Court today indicted four Islamic militants and a former Ranger in connection with last year’s attempted assassination of President Pervez Musharraf in southern Pakistan, prosecutors said.

The indictment handed down by Judge Maqbool Rizvi charged the men with attempting to kill General Musharraf by detonating an explosive-laden vehicle during his visit to Karachi last April, prosecution lawyer Abdul Waheed Khan told reporters.

Rizvi read out the indictment in a fortified courtroom inside a prison. The defendants pleaded not guilty. The maximum penalty for attempted murder is life in prison. Named in the indictment are Mohammed
Imran, Mohammed Hanif, Mohammed Sharib, Mufti Zubair who allegedly belong to Harkat-ul-Mujahedeen
Al-Almi, an outlawed militant group that Pakistan authorities believe is linked to the Al-Qaida. All four defendants were convicted earlier this week for their role in last year’s suicide car bombing. Imran and Hanif were sentenced to death by hanging, while Sharib and Zubair were sentenced to life in prison.
AP

Lahore, April 24
The Pakistani Government is ready to provide unrestricted passage to Indian Sikh devotees who want to visit Gurdwara Kartarpur in that country without a passport or a visa.

President Pervez Musharraf has offered to provide Indian Sikhs with a corridor which would be fenced on both sides. No passport or visa would be required, but pilgrims would have to return within a few hours the same day, Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee co-chairman Sham Singh and senior officials of the Pakistan Evacuate Trust said.

Gurdwara Kartarpur in Pakistan is at a distance of 3 km from Gurdwara Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur, with the Ravi separating them. A bridge which joined the two gurdwaras was bombarded during the 1965 Indo-Pak war. PTI

Washington, April 24
Coalition forces in Baghdad have arrested four officials from the defunct regime of Saddam Hussein, including the Commander of the Air Defence Force, the US military said.

Commander of the force Muzahim Sa’b Hassan
al-Tikriti listed as No 10 on the US list of the 55 most wanted Iraqis, was taken in custody by the coalition forces, US Central Command in Doha, Qatar, said yesterday.

The forces have also arrested Zuhayr Talib Abd
al-Sattar al-Naqib, who was the Director of Military Intelligence and is number 21 on the list. Minister of Trade Muhammad Mahdi
al-Salih, was also captured. He ranked 48 on the most wanted list.

During a raid in Baghdad, US forces arrested the former official in charge of the American section of Iraqi Intelligence Service Salim Sa’id Khalaf
al-Jumayli. He was not on the list but is believed to be capable of identifying people spying on Iraq’s behalf in the USA.

One “enemy casualty’’ occurred during the arrest of
al-Jumayli, Central Command said.

So far coalition forces have caught 11 of the 55 most wanted Iraqis.
DPA

Durban, April 24
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela, was today found guilty of fraud and theft amounting to nearly a million rands ($ 131,000) and faces a maximum of 15 years in jail.

Magistrate Peet Johnson of the Pretoria Regional Court found the leader of African National Congress Women’s League guilty on 43 charges of fraud and 25 of theft.

Her co-accused Addy Moolman, a financial broker, was convicted on all 60 charges of fraud and 25 of theft.

The trial started last July and saw 23 witnesses testifying for the state. Madikizela-Mandela and Moolman went into the witness box in their own defence.

Madikizela-Mandela, who is also an ANC MP, and Moolman were found guilty of defrauding the now defunct Sambou Bank by submitting loan applications on behalf of fictitious members of the ANC Women’s League.

Madikizela-Mandela will be sentenced within the next day or two and faces a maximum of 15 years in jail.

Madikizela-Mandela, 64, will be stripped of her seat in Parliament and all her parliamentary privileges and perks after the conviction.

Judge Johnson, while pronouncing the verdict, said the evidence of the state was “overwhelming” and that her evidence — that she did not know about the fraud — was “totally improbable”.

The conviction today is the latest setback to the fiery politician who has faced a series of controversies since she was reunited with her husband Nelson Mandela after his release from prison in early 1990. However, the couple was separated in 1992 and officially divorced in 1996.

She was found guilty in 1991 of kidnapping four youth activists and the murder of a fifth, Stompie Moeketsi Seiepi. But after an appeal, her six-year sentence was suspended.

After being elected as an ANC MP in 1994, she was appointed as a Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture by then President Nelson Mandela. But Mr Mandela fired her a year later after she disobeyed him by going on a trip to Ghana without his permission.
PTI

GLOBAL MONITOR

PAK ARRESTS 21 INDIAN FISHERMEN
KARACHI: Pakistan’s Maritime Security Agency (MSA) has arrested 21 Indian fishermen in the Arabian Sea for violating Pakistani territorial waters and illegal fishing, officials said. They were arrested fishing in Pakistani waters, 50 nautical miles East of port city of Karachi, officials said. Four boats were impounded.
DPA

A Pakistani police officer talks to arrested Indian fishermen at a police station in Karachi on Wednesday.
— AP/PTI photo

MONKS BLOCK NORWEGIAN EMBASSY
COLOMBO: About 50 Buddhist monks on Thursday blocked the entrance to the Norwegian embassy in the Sri Lankan capital, accusing Oslo-backed monitors of a ceasefire in the island’s 19-year civil war of favoring Tamil Tiger rebels. The monks, from the National Priests’ Front, sat in protest blocking the only passage to the embassy, while the police hurriedly put up barricades to separate the monks from the embassy building in Colombo’s posh Ward Place residential district. AP

TALIBAN CLAIM CAPTURE OF TOWN
ISLAMABAD: Taliban in Afghanistan claim to have captured another district headquarters in southwestern Zabul province, the newspaper The News reported Thursday. A man identifying
himself as a Taliban spokesman told the daily that Deh-i-Chopan fell to the Taliban on Wednesday after a fight in which nine government militiamen and one Taliban were killed.
DPA

NEW ZEALAND’S FIRST SARS CASE
WELLINGTON: A person has been isolated in a New Zealand hospital in what may be the country’s first SARS case a health official said on Thursday. The patient, whom local media reported was a woman, was admitted to hospital on Tuesday after returning from a three week tour of China at the weekend, said Hawkes Bay District Health Board spokeswoman Karalyn van
Deursen. Reuters